If awards are a measure of a man's impact on the world, Kenzo Mori has made significant contributions.

If awards are a measure of a man's impact on the world, Kenzo Mori has made significant contributions.

Mori was the recipient of a Queen's Jubilee Award for public service and a Fifth Class Order of the Rising Sun from Japan's emperor for promoting relations between Canada and Japan.

He died Jan. 5 in a Markham nursing home, his life slipping away with the same quiet dignity with which he'd lived it.

Mori died 20 days short of his 93rd birthday, eight days after he took a fall on Boxing Day.

He spent his professional life as a writer, editor and publisher of the New Canadian until his retirement in 1983.

The English-language newspaper, aimed at second- and third-generation Japanese Canadians, has since ceased publication.

Nephew Rick Mori says his uncle spent most of his life in the newspaper business keeping Japanese Canadians informed. He also co-authored The Story of Manzo Nagano: The First Japanese Immigrant to Canada.

"He was a very important guy in the community," says Frank Moritsugu, who worked with Mori when he became New Canadian's assistant Japanese editor in the late 1940s.

He put the cry from Japanese Canadians for redress into words in the pages of his newspaper, a cry to put right the material losses and humiliation they endured as "enemy aliens" in this country during World War II. Moritsugu said Mori's efforts helped unleashed an important public discussion about racism in Canada – no matter the ethnic group.

He suggests by the time war in the Middle East erupted in the early 1990s, the horrific experience of the Japanese Canadians had been so widely aired that it served as a cautionary tale of what can happen when racism overtakes reason.

And Mori always went about his important work in a quiet, amiable way, Moritsugu says. He also chose to mix with people rather than hiding in his office.

He was interned in a camp north of Vancouver during the war along with his older brother, George, said Rick Mori.

"They didn't talk about their camp experience much," he says.

After the war, Mori took a job on a Kelowna farm. His niece, Elaine Kimura, says her uncle was the kind of man who develops a lifelong friendship with his employers. "He felt that in order for Japanese Canadians to be good citizens, we had to integrate into the community," says Kimura. "He felt that in order for ethnic Canadians to have a stronger voice they had to band together."

Mori was a founding member of the Ontario and Canadian Ethnic Press Associations, she says. She recalls how he'd take her to association meetings to join the children of other members, all of them dressed up in their national costumes.

One year then-prime minister Lester Pearson used a group photo of the children as his Christmas card.

"He was a man ahead of his times," says Kimura, 60. "He spoke to his generation more than mine: To the people who were interned, he wrote about letting go."

By accident of birth and circumstance, Mori was the quintessential bicultural Canadian. He came into the world in Canada – born near Vancouver, B.C., in 1914, the son of immigrants, and one of eight children.

But his family moved back to Japan when he was 4, where he remained for the next 12 years. After returning to B.C. at 16, Mori graduated high school and later earned an arts degree from the University of British Columbia by taking evening classes.

"A few years ago, I retired and went to Japan for the first time," says Kimura. "At Hikone University, there was a row of maple trees he had planted in the 1970s.

"By the time I went there, they were tall and beautiful. Among his papers, I found letters from Japanese-Canadian students who had gone there to study, saying how proud they were."

"He was dedicated to anything having to do with the Japanese people," says his nephew.

Mori, a member of the Toronto Buddhist Church, came to Toronto in 1946. He and his wife Isao lived on Avenue Rd. near Lawrence for 50 years, leaving it for a nursing home a couple of years ago only when health made it necessary. They had no children.

"Isao went to the nursing home first. He stayed in the house by himself for a year," says Rick Mori, remembering with affection how his uncle started cooking for himself when he became disenchanted with the Meals On Wheels they'd arranged for him.

Mori also recalls his uncle's love of fishing, especially trout fishing, and how he often took him along when he was young.

"I remember him as being happy," says Kimura. "He was always the toastmaster at celebrations and loved parties."

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